In
return for George W.’s continued political support, the oil industry
has played a prominent role in funding Bush's two gubernatorial races
and now his presidential candidacy. Of the $41 million Bush raised in
two gubernatorial races, $5.6 million (14 percent) came from the energy
and natural resources industries. [AP, April 3, 2000]

The oil and gas industry has extended its
support for the Texas governor to his presidential bid, donating 15
times more money to Bush than to his Democratic opponent, Al Gore. As of
June 20, Bush had raised $1,463,799 from the oil industry to Gore's
$95,460, according to opensecrets.org [July 26, 2000]. Of the top-ten
lifetime contributors to George W.’s political war chests, six either
are in the oil business or have ties to it. [See George W. Bush: Top 25
Career Patrons, The Buying of the President 2000, Center for
Public Integrity, http://www.publicintegrity.org/reports/bop2000/bush_patrons.htm
.]

George W.’s chairman of his campaign’s finance
committee is Donald Evans. According to The Austin Chronicle,
Evans is “perhaps the governor’s closest friend” and has known
George W. for three decades since their Midland days together. Evans is
also CEO of Tom Brown Inc., an oil and gas company with the bulk of its
production in Wyoming. Evans helped pioneer the Pioneers, a group of
Bush financial supporters who have each raised at least $100,000.

In 1995, Bush rewarded Evans by appointing him to
the University of Texas Board of Regents, one of the most “powerful
patronage” jobs in Texas. Evans rose to chairman of the board. With an
annual budget of $5.4 billion and more than 76,000 employees, the Texas
university system is one of the largest in the country. The Texas
University Board of Regents also manages an investment portfolio of more
than $14 billion. [The Austin Chronicle, March 17, 2000]

George
W., like his father before him, also brought his Texas oil financial
connections to Washington to help national Republican fundraising
efforts. In May, Ray Hunt, chairman and CEO of Hunt Oil Co., was named
finance chairman of the Republican National Committee’s Victory 2000
Committee. Based in Dallas, Hunt Oil is an independent, private company
that is among the top dozen independent oil companies in the United
States. [Cox News, May 10, 2000]

Richard
Kinder and Kenneth Lay, the former and current CEOs of Houston-based
Enron Corp., also rank as two of Bush’s top contributors. Both are
members of Bush’s Pioneers and have been longstanding financial
benefactors behind Bush’s political career. By the end of 1999,
funders connected to Enron had contributed $90,000 to the Bush
presidential campaign, the fourth largest bundle at the time. [Boston
Globe, Oct. 3, 1999]

Enron,
a company worth $61.5 billion, is the No. 1 buyer and seller of natural
gas and the top wholesale power marketer in the United States. As
governor, George W. has embraced energy deregulation, an initiative on
which Enron has led the field of competitors.

In
1997, one Enron facility in Pasadena, Texas, released 274,361 pounds of
toxic waste. In many states, this would rank as one of the top toxic
pollution emitters, but not in Texas, where nearly 262 million pounds of
toxic waste were released into the environment in 1997, the most in the
country. [EPA TRI data, 1997]